Netherlands

Urgent Action: Save Dutch Leadership on International Aid

Oct 29th, 2012 1:51 PM UTC
By Stuart McWilliam

Today we’re asking our Dutch ONE members to take part in an urgent action:

The Netherlands has developed a strong and proud leadership position of helping the poorest countries in the world. It’s something to be very proud of.

But this could be destroyed in a matter of days.

International development aid is one of the budget issues under threat in the Dutch coalition agreement, which is about to be signed.

Please send an urgent email to negotiators Mark Rutte and Diederik Samsom to tell them not to let development aid fall through the coalition cracks:

An agreement which cuts development aid would have huge implications. Not only because of the direct impact on the poorest countries, but because of the signals it sends to other countries, encouraging them to lessen their contributions too.  Millions of people will be affected by this.

This doesn’t need to be the way. Dutch aid is already having a huge impact. It’s working. We should keep it that way.

Please take action now and send an email:

http://act.one.org/letter/dutch_aid/

Please also spread the word by liking and sharing the action on Facebook, and sending a tweet to your social media networks.

Thank you for your help,

Stuart McWilliam, ONE.org

ONE takes your message to the Dutch parliament

Mar 30th, 2012 9:00 AM UTC
By Tamira Gunzburg

This week ONE and our friends at Cordaid handed in the Trillion Dollar Scandal petition to the Dutch parliament. Over 89,000 European ONE members signed the petition, asking European leaders to pass strong laws on transparency for oil, mining and logging companies.

Last October, the EU proposed legislation to oblige European extractive companies to publish the payments they make to governments where they operate. The Dutch government has stated its support for transparency measures, but it has not specified how strong these measures should be. However, the devil is in the detail of this kind of legislation, and there is huge pressure from the oil and mining industry to weaken the proposed law.

ONE and Cordaid handed the petition over during an official Dutch Parliament session, asking them to ensure the government supports strong measures when the Council of the EU, bringing together the 27 EU Member States, decides on this matter.

We met MPs from all the major political parties in the Netherlands including Mariko Peters (Green Party), Ewout Irrgang (Socialist Party), Jeroen de Lange (PvdA), Nebahat Albayrak (PvdA and chairperson of the Foreign Affairs Committee), Henk Jan Ormel (CDA), Kathleen Ferrier (CDA) and Ingrid De Caluwe (VVD).

The Netherlands is critical to ensuring European transparency legislation helps people hold their Governments to account. During our meeting with Dutch MPs we asked them to ensure that their Government stop the trillion dollar scandal allowing corrupt practices to be brushed under the carpet.

Presenting the petition in the Netherlands followed similar deliveries earlier this month in the UK, France and Denmark.

For the EU law to be adopted, the European Council has to decide together with the European Parliament and just today, in Brussels, the European Parliament discussed its draft position on the transparency measures. The MEPs are key to ensuring the legislation isn’t watered down, and they, too, need to hear from European citizens that fighting corruption in Africa is an issue we care about.

Please make your voice heard and sign our petition or write to your MEP asking him or her to do the right thing!